


Another Place, Another Time

by ProtoNeoRomantic



Series: I Want Another First Kiss [42]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Buffy and Giles protect each other from information, Developing Relationship, Episode: s02e08 The Dark Age, Episode: s07e03 Same Time Same Place, F/M, Fear, First Kiss, Giles is a perfect gentleman, Willow is Naked for no good reason, Willow is not ready to come home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-09 23:39:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16459265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic
Summary: A first kiss Willow and Giles might have shared in Season 7, because the end of the world is no reason not to have a happy ending.(7 of 7)





	Another Place, Another Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gilescandy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gilescandy/gifts).



“Not there!” Giles demanded, gripping the phone so tight his fingers ached. His heart was in his throat, beating like mad. His voice sounded half strangled. “What do you mean she's not there?!”

Buffy heaved an exacerbated sigh, and no wonder. The lines he'd just delivered were hackneyed and foolish, Giles realized, like something a surprised person would say on television in order to emote and give exposition at the same time. Dismay and disbelief painted in broad strokes for the kind of audience that expected to get a good story (beginning, middle, end) in forty-five minutes or less, leaving room for plenty of beer commercials.

“I mean,” Buffy repeated impatiently, taking her cue, “Willow is not here. We went and met the plane you said you put her on and she wasn't on it.”

“Good Lord,” Giles muttered in a tone that wanted to be a gasp. The next second, he suppressed a sigh of his own, chiding himself for imagining that he could hear Buffy's eyes roll all the way on the other side of the Atlantic.

“Could she have gotten off the plane?” Buffy asked worriedly. “Maybe after you left?”

From that, Giles realized that when he had said he'd 'seen Willow off' on her journey Buffy had taken it to mean that he literally walked her to the boarding gate and watched her board the aircraft. Never mind the fact that the world had changed while Buffy was busy fighting her way back from the dead, and that kind of 'seeing off' was no longer allowed.

Wandering down that blind alley of useless explanation and into the inevitable argument about the space between what he had said and what she had heard, right down to parsing whether seeing Willow to a cab 'counted' as seeing her off, would have been worse than counter productive.

“Or in Chicago, perhaps,” Giles answered instead, telling himself that this was a more productive as well as a more... strategically tactful answer. The two of them went on in the same vein for a few minutes, discussing a variety of unpleasant scenarios and implausible reasons to believe that the real explanation would somehow turn out to be something harmless and simple instead. Desperately trying to reassure one another that Willow still was who she was.

No matter how they both tried to force themselves to imagine only best case scenarios, Giles could still hear that his own voice was filled with deep, terrifying shock and worry, more so even than Buffy's was. That was probably because—even still—she lack his understanding of the full power of the person who seemed to have taken these deliberate steps to absent and conceal herself from them, for what purpose they knew not.

If Buffy had had half a clue who they were dealing with, she'd have know that Willow was every bit as capable of changing her mind and going elsewhere in mid air as at the terminal in London or Chicago either one. She could be literally anywhere. Doing anything. But Buffy remained focused on the narrow range of possibilities that would have applied to anyone on furlough from a place of treatment that was meant to cure her of an unsettling habit of killing people.

That might be for the best, Giles decided. It certainly made the situation seem less threatening. When Buffy felt threatened, whoever or whatever she saw as a threat was in grave danger. And now the same was probably true of Willow. With two such powerful beings, a simple misunderstanding could have easily escalated into a deadly cataclysm if the power of fear were to become involved. The better course was to try and keep Buffy calm.

That was easier said than done. Giles was far from calm himself. “This is all my fault,” he couldn't help saying over and over. He kept worrying through the details of their last conversation. When he had insisted that Willow return to California in the face of her vehement insistence that she wasn't ready. And his worrying seemed to be worrying Buffy.

Finally, he feigned a need to do research relevant to the problem, just to get off the phone. Buffy didn't question that, didn't point out the obvious fact that no book in the universe was going to tell them what had only happened a day ago and had most likely gone unobserved. She seemed relieved, actually. Giles decided not to parse that too finely. He was just as relieved to end their conversation as she was, after all.

Giles set the phone receiver back in it's cradle. He knew that he must go and tell the coven what had happened strait away. Besides the fact that they needed to know, he desperately needed their advice. Indeed, loth though he was to admit it; frankly, he needed comforting, reassuring that he had not just ruined everything for everyone.

He'd screwed up a lot in his lifetime, Rupert knew. He'd put the world in danger as much as saved it, whatever his young friends thought. But the thought that he could have pushed Willow into a position in which she felt she had no choice but to fall back into the illusory security of wielding terrible power against those who loved her most... Even in the conditional tense, the guilt was almost overwhelming.

As he turned towards the door—his closed and locked bedroom door that had been so all the while—Giles absentmindedly whipped off his glasses, meaning to clean them. Instead, he nearly poked out his own eye with one of the stems as he collided with the person **—the naked person—the naked** _ **female**_ **person—** who was suddenly standing at his shoulder!

“Ah!” he cried, startled and momentarily terrified. Willow did essentially the same as they both leapt backward several inches and she tried to cover more than two handfuls of her body with her only two hands. Both of them colored deeply and began to stammer. It took Giles a couple of minutes to regain the presence of mind to turn away and to invite Willow to find something to cover up with, gesturing vaguely in the general direction of the closet without looking over his shoulder.

Much too soon, Willow said, “Okay, you can look now.” She sounded sheepish and a little glum. Considering the scant second that has passed, Giles expected to find that she had completely attired herself using magic. Instead, he found her lying naked in his bed, under the covers, blushing a beautiful crimson and smiling shyly.

Giles felt flustered and exasperated, but that wasn't all he felt and he had a feeling Willow knew it. Or possibly he only hoped/feared that she did. Whether she meant her choice of coverings to be provocative or merely didn't realize that he was man enough to care if there was a naked woman in his bed, he didn't know. He hardly knew which was worse, especially in light of the (hopefully still secret) fact that a large part of himself was thinking less 'this is totally in appropriate' and more 'this has definite possibilities'.

Either way, it was maddeningly presumptuous of her. But remembering his too recent and much more terrible worries, he decided that this was probably a matter that could wait to be addressed. Perhaps indefinitely. He supposed it hardly mattered if she was in his bed, as long as he wasn't. It was certainly better than having her off God knew where delving into extremely dark magic as he had just been imaging.

“How are you here?”he asked seriously, side stepping the whole issue of her nudity by ignoring it completely. Since that was a great deal easier to do with his glasses off, he kept cleaning them, buffing and rebuffing their smooth, clear surfaces with his handkerchief.

“Magic, obviously,” she admitted, lowering her gaze a bit. “But...” her brows knit together and her face became very serious. Her speech was increasingly rapid and pressured as she explained, “I did go to Sunnydale, but... well... I couldn't get off the plane. So I locked myself in the bathroom to be alone with my panic, but the crew kept banging on the door and threatening to have someone come drag me out or whatever, and so I was freaked... and... I don't know. Suddenly, I thought _anywhere but here_ , you know, like we used to do in school, and, and I thought, well not so much thought as wi—um imagined? And here I am. Hi.”

“Oh thank God,” Giles breathed, relieved to the depths of his soul to find that Willow had not in any way come close to striking out on her own as a renegade, quite the opposite. But the look of hope and fledgling confidence that his expression of relief sparked in her eyes was unmistakable. It's implications were amazing, humbling, and crystal clear.

“You wished yourself here,” he more stated than asked. “This is your, your place of refuge, of, of safety. That makes, that is to say that part of—that makes perfect sense, but, but—” Giles could not bring himself to ask what he was trying to ask. Willow understood anyway.

“It wasn't just that I didn't want to face them. I mean I guess mainly it was but it was more than that. I didn't want to face them, or It, or anything alone. I mean, not alone alone... more... alone without you. I always feel alone when I'm without you. And, and, maybe that's not important right now, cuz, hey, end of the world stuff. Except, actually, it is. Important. I mean, it's always the end of the world and if we stop living our lives just because the world is ending then, I don't know, it's like the demons win or something? I mean not really, but you know what I mean.” She paused, looking truly worried, “I mean, don't you?”

Giles took a deep breath and put his glasses back on. “I believe I do,” he admitted, walking towards the bed. “And I'd be lying if I said the thought had never crossed my mind that, well, we might both be better off facing things together. That your face could be something I'd wake up to every morning and never tire of it. That your voice, your gentle presence, your humor, your passion, and your intellectual fire, might all be things I needed in my life, and hopefully vice versa.”

Standing at the edge of the bed now, looking down into her eyes, Giles took another deep breath and continued, “And I'd be lying if I said the thought of you lying naked in my bed had never occurred to me either.”

“Really?” Willow brightened, sitting up and, he was relieved to note, continuing to hold the bed covers to her chest.

“Really,” Giles assured her warmly. He knelt next to the bed so that they were more or less face to face. In fact, she was looking very slightly down as him. She leaned in towards him, head tilted at a slight angle. Ignoring the doubts and fears that inevitably accompanied his every bold or decisive action, Giles met Willow's approaching lips with his own.

Their lips met in one brief tender kiss. Their eyes smiled warmly at one another. The second kiss was fuller, more passionate. More intimate. Longer. Willow would certainly have continued, probably to as far an extreme as Giles would allow her to go.

But that would be irresponsible, unwise, and depending on the details of what might follow possibly dishonest, over-reaching, and unkind. Especially given Willow's still clearly very vulnerable state. There were good reason why relationships were meant to progress gradually over time. And though there was no denying that Willow was a woman, fully grown; there was also no denying that she didn't yet have a great deal of experience at being an adult.

Giles got reluctantly to his feet. Willow's look of confusion and disappointment was heart-melting. “I'm not going anywhere,” he clarified, “except into another room so that you can get dressed while I call my travel agent and book us two tickets to Sunnydale.”


End file.
